| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
John Kerry: Botching Jokes and American
Security For Thirty Years
There are those who say that the recent seismic convulsion
over John Kerry’s “botched joke” -- which insinuated that the U.
S. military is mainly comprised of semi-literate trash from
America’s ghettos and trailer parks -- was orchestrated by
right-wing hate-talkers, was way out of proportion and was a
“distraction” from the real issues. And as Kerry originally said
when he refused to apologize, which was right before he
actually apologized, if anyone owes an apology to the troops
it’s President Bush for getting them into a hopeless quagmire in
Iraq.
But whether or not Iraq turns out to have been a mistake is a
completely separate issue from how Senator Nuance feels
about members of the United States military forces and that is
a perfectly legitimate and significant topic for debate. Of
course, debate isn’t really necessary since he has a long and
irrefutably conspicuous record on the subject -- and let’s just
say that it’s less than positive.
No, actually, let’s be a bit more specific and say that it’s
utterly disdainful. Back in the early ‘70s, after he came back
from Vietnam, his fellow soldiers were not yet part of his fabled
“band of brothers,” but, rather, were still war criminals and
baby-killers who regularly behaved “in a fashion reminiscent of
Genghis Khan.” A little later, during a 1972 run for the House,
he mused that “a volunteer army would be an army of the poor
and the black and the brown” -- which, of course, to the blue-
blooded Kerry, meant an army of the ignorant -- and would be
more prone to “the perpetuation of war crimes.”
In more recent times, since he has been a senator, he has been
against every new weapons system to come down the pike,
almost every military action taken by the U.S., Reagan’s tough
stance against Soviet communism, and basically every course
of action that would lift a finger to stand up to the larger evils
in the world. In other words, he’d sooner lick a metal pump
handle in January than even consider the serious use of
American military power.
But Kerry’s botched joke, slip of the tongue, verbal
indiscretion or whatever you prefer to call it (“faux pas,” if you
like French -- and Kerry does) provided us not with a Karl Rove-
type exploitable distraction, but rather with a monumentally
significant issue that all Americans who give a damn about
their country and its future (not to mention the future of the
entire civilized world) should be aware of. That issue is this:
What is the attitude, not just of John Kerry, but of most
members of the modern Democratic Party (after all, they
nominated the guy to be their supreme leader in 2004), when it
comes to the military and the use of American power?
As a public service I’ll go ahead and provide the very simple
answer: The modern Democratic Party would rather sit back
and watch hordes of bug-eyed, “Allahu akbar!”-screaming
jihadists run amok on six of the world’s seven continents than
put one pair of American boots on foreign soil to try and save
the world from a new Dark Age. Either they don’t perceive the
threat as particularly serious or they just don’t seem to think
there’s anything much worth fighting for short of an actual D-
Day type military invasion of American shores. Either way,
Americans are less safe with Democrats in power.
Take their record when it comes to communism, for instance.
(And again, I’m talking about the modern, post-Vietnam
Democratic Party.) To the Dem’s way of thinking, what was the
point in fighting a bunch of senseless, unwinnable skirmishes
in exotic, out-of-the-way places like Vietnam and Central
America? If the locals wanted to adopt what amounted to little
more than an alternative lifestyle, who were we to judge?
Sure, the forces of communism aggregately slaughtered
somewhere close to 100 million people during the course of the
20th century, but why was that our problem? Sometimes things
get messy when people are trying to work the kinks out of
certain liberal social agendas. Given time, the communists
might have eventually come up with the perfect utopian social
system.
Now, the large existential threat of our time is radical Islamic
terrorism, whose insane ideology can hatch crazed fanatics
who with box cutters can take down Manhattan skyscrapers
and whose followers will do lord only knows what if/when they
get their hands on some serious weapons of mass destruction.
But John Kerry (and many of his fellow Democrats) thinks it
should all be handled like an episode of “Law and Order” where
a crime takes place, detectives investigate the scene, arrests
are made, the bad guys get lawyered up and it all gets worked
out in court. Does that make you feel safe?
John Kerry is about the furthest thing in human form from
being an effective joke teller, which would entail having the
ability to make other human beings laugh. That basically
means that any joke he might try to tell would, by definition,
end up being botched.
Nonetheless, he’s sticking to his botched joke explanation and
insisting that it was aimed at President Bush, not Americans in
uniform. He has also cleverly stipulated that the really
significant botch job is the one the president has done in Iraq.
But even if you grant that point, here’s the big question for
voters: Which party do you think will ultimately do more to
keep America safe -- the one that nominated the military-
disdaining Kerry to be its presidential candidate (and
excommunicated Joe Lieberman for not being antiwar) or the
one that’s actually willing to use the world’s greatest military
in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism?
See, it’s not the so-called botched joke itself, it’s the thinking
behind it that matters, and the record is crystal clear.
Security For Thirty Years
There are those who say that the recent seismic convulsion
over John Kerry’s “botched joke” -- which insinuated that the U.
S. military is mainly comprised of semi-literate trash from
America’s ghettos and trailer parks -- was orchestrated by
right-wing hate-talkers, was way out of proportion and was a
“distraction” from the real issues. And as Kerry originally said
when he refused to apologize, which was right before he
actually apologized, if anyone owes an apology to the troops
it’s President Bush for getting them into a hopeless quagmire in
Iraq.
But whether or not Iraq turns out to have been a mistake is a
completely separate issue from how Senator Nuance feels
about members of the United States military forces and that is
a perfectly legitimate and significant topic for debate. Of
course, debate isn’t really necessary since he has a long and
irrefutably conspicuous record on the subject -- and let’s just
say that it’s less than positive.
No, actually, let’s be a bit more specific and say that it’s
utterly disdainful. Back in the early ‘70s, after he came back
from Vietnam, his fellow soldiers were not yet part of his fabled
“band of brothers,” but, rather, were still war criminals and
baby-killers who regularly behaved “in a fashion reminiscent of
Genghis Khan.” A little later, during a 1972 run for the House,
he mused that “a volunteer army would be an army of the poor
and the black and the brown” -- which, of course, to the blue-
blooded Kerry, meant an army of the ignorant -- and would be
more prone to “the perpetuation of war crimes.”
In more recent times, since he has been a senator, he has been
against every new weapons system to come down the pike,
almost every military action taken by the U.S., Reagan’s tough
stance against Soviet communism, and basically every course
of action that would lift a finger to stand up to the larger evils
in the world. In other words, he’d sooner lick a metal pump
handle in January than even consider the serious use of
American military power.
But Kerry’s botched joke, slip of the tongue, verbal
indiscretion or whatever you prefer to call it (“faux pas,” if you
like French -- and Kerry does) provided us not with a Karl Rove-
type exploitable distraction, but rather with a monumentally
significant issue that all Americans who give a damn about
their country and its future (not to mention the future of the
entire civilized world) should be aware of. That issue is this:
What is the attitude, not just of John Kerry, but of most
members of the modern Democratic Party (after all, they
nominated the guy to be their supreme leader in 2004), when it
comes to the military and the use of American power?
As a public service I’ll go ahead and provide the very simple
answer: The modern Democratic Party would rather sit back
and watch hordes of bug-eyed, “Allahu akbar!”-screaming
jihadists run amok on six of the world’s seven continents than
put one pair of American boots on foreign soil to try and save
the world from a new Dark Age. Either they don’t perceive the
threat as particularly serious or they just don’t seem to think
there’s anything much worth fighting for short of an actual D-
Day type military invasion of American shores. Either way,
Americans are less safe with Democrats in power.
Take their record when it comes to communism, for instance.
(And again, I’m talking about the modern, post-Vietnam
Democratic Party.) To the Dem’s way of thinking, what was the
point in fighting a bunch of senseless, unwinnable skirmishes
in exotic, out-of-the-way places like Vietnam and Central
America? If the locals wanted to adopt what amounted to little
more than an alternative lifestyle, who were we to judge?
Sure, the forces of communism aggregately slaughtered
somewhere close to 100 million people during the course of the
20th century, but why was that our problem? Sometimes things
get messy when people are trying to work the kinks out of
certain liberal social agendas. Given time, the communists
might have eventually come up with the perfect utopian social
system.
Now, the large existential threat of our time is radical Islamic
terrorism, whose insane ideology can hatch crazed fanatics
who with box cutters can take down Manhattan skyscrapers
and whose followers will do lord only knows what if/when they
get their hands on some serious weapons of mass destruction.
But John Kerry (and many of his fellow Democrats) thinks it
should all be handled like an episode of “Law and Order” where
a crime takes place, detectives investigate the scene, arrests
are made, the bad guys get lawyered up and it all gets worked
out in court. Does that make you feel safe?
John Kerry is about the furthest thing in human form from
being an effective joke teller, which would entail having the
ability to make other human beings laugh. That basically
means that any joke he might try to tell would, by definition,
end up being botched.
Nonetheless, he’s sticking to his botched joke explanation and
insisting that it was aimed at President Bush, not Americans in
uniform. He has also cleverly stipulated that the really
significant botch job is the one the president has done in Iraq.
But even if you grant that point, here’s the big question for
voters: Which party do you think will ultimately do more to
keep America safe -- the one that nominated the military-
disdaining Kerry to be its presidential candidate (and
excommunicated Joe Lieberman for not being antiwar) or the
one that’s actually willing to use the world’s greatest military
in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism?
See, it’s not the so-called botched joke itself, it’s the thinking
behind it that matters, and the record is crystal clear.